trash the government's toothless consent agreement with Microsoft. And it was Reback's now famous (or infamous, if you're Microsoft) white paper that gave the Justice Department ammunition that could end up quashing Microsoft's $1.5 billion takeover of Intuit.

Oh, yes, Reback also found time to lead Borland International to victory in its publicized copyright dispute with Lotus Development.

All this has made Reback a hot property indeed. "He's kind of like a hero for the underdog," says Nina Schuyler, who follows Silicon Valley action for the San Francisco Daily Journal, the legal newspaper. "He stood up to the plate and took on Microsoft."

At the Palo Alto headquarters of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, where he is a partner, Reback looks like a guy who just jumped off the cover of GQ. The suspenders, the wide-striped shirt, the Armani-style glasses all say in no uncertain terms that this youngish-looking 45-year- old has arrived.

Those who know him characterize Reback as the hard-driving, aggressive type who doesn't let much stand in his way. "He moves quickly, can see an opportunity and can step right in," says Schuyler. But his confidence sometimes comes across as arrogance. "He can be abrasive at times, and associates have found him difficult to work with," contends one longtime industry observer.

Ironically, in temperament and style he is very much like the man who has become his chief nemesis, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. Both talk quickly, the words spilling out so fast that sentences tend to run over each other. And both are dead sure they are right.

Reback's true strength, says Borland International counsel Robert Kohn, is that "he's one of the few attorneys who understand the very special relationship between intellectual property and antitrust."

Born to middle-class parents in Knoxville, Tenn., Reback went to Yale, where he studied economics, and then got his law degree at Stanford in 1974. His first job was with Covington & Burlington in Washington, D.C., where he cut his teeth on antitrust issues. He came to Silicon Valley in 1981 to do antitrust and intellectual property work for Fenwick & West.

In October 1991, Reback went to Wilson, Sonsini, which at the time concentrated mostly on corporate law. "Essentially all my clients were the same as Larry Sonsini's clients," he says. "He was doing the corporate work, and I was doing the antitrust and intellectual property

work." The 4-year-old marriage has blossomed. When Reback joined Wilson, Sonsini, it had six technology transaction lawyers. Now it has 18.

It had no patent attorneys. Now it has eight. "We now have 65 lawyers in our technology group (out of 250 in the firm), says Reback.

"We're sort of on a roll."

They've been positively on fire since Reback became a crusader for companies that have complained about Microsoft's alleged monopolistic practices.

Animosity toward Redmond, Wash.- based Microsoft has grown in the software industry since last summer's consent decree with the Justice Department pretty much let the company go on dominating the software industry. But before Reback came along, the effort to stop Gates' juggernaut was unfocused.

By picking up the lance, Reback was able to marshal forces that would not take on Microsoft alone. His white paper in November was paid for by three top (unidentified) software makers, with nearly 20 more companies providing information and a number of others offering money if needed.

Every one of those companies has chosen to remain nameless, in part because they fear possible retribution by Microsoft. Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems and Borland International, all well-known enemies of Microsoft, have been suggested as the companies that financed the white paper.

Although the white paper was solicited by the Justice Department for its review of the proposed Intuit deal, it ended up as a scathing indictment of Microsoft's entire marketing scheme. In fact, some people say it built a better case against Microsoft than the government was able to do in four years of investigations.

"It was something of an eye opener for them," says Reback. "Nobody had ever put the issue in a package and tied it with a bow like that."

The white paper was built around the economics of increasing returns, in which consumers can get locked into the first technologies that appear in a marketplace, even if the technologies are inferior. Using that as a springboard, Reback drew a picture of Microsoft as a company hell-bent on controlling everything from online financial transactions to corporate networks.

In addressing the prospect of a Microsoft online service, the paper said, "It is difficult to imagine that in an open society such as this one with multiple information sources, a single company could seize sufficient control of information transmission so as to constitute a threat to the underpinnings of a free society. But such a scenario is a realistic (and perhaps probable) outcome."

Not surprisingly, the white paper has drawn the wrath of Microsoft. Writing in the current issue of Upside magazine, company lawyer William Neukom says, "It is no exaggeration to say that the arguments made in the white paper lead inexorably to a world in which bureaucracy smothers innovation and robs consumers of their freedom to choose."

Many of the themes in the white paper were reprised in Reback's friend-of- the-court brief during Sporkin's review of the government's antitrust settlement with Microsoft.

"Gary had his ear to the ground and was the first to recognize what Sporkin was doing in the hearings last fall," says Borland's Kohn.

At one point, the judge, who repeatedly complained that Assistant Attorney General Anne Bingaman wasn't giving him enough details, said in open court that Reback was one of the few people who provided him with useful information.

Reback believes that by treating Microsoft with kid gloves, the Justice Department has badly wounded President Clinton's standing among Silicon Valley leaders -- many of whom supported him in the last election.

"If Bill Clinton knew how much damage Anne Bingaman is doing to Democratic interests in Silicon valley, would he let her do it?" asks Reback. "I can't imagine that's the case."

Reback insists he has nothing personal against Microsoft. "Nobody should punish them for making better stuff, or because they don't take weekends off or because they're relentless," he says. "The question is: What's in it for the rest of us?"

The answer, he's says, may be: not much. Unless the government steps in and does something (in the white paper, he floated the idea of forcing Microsoft to split its applications and operating systems businesses). "If the Intuit deal goes through, if the antitrust settlement goes through, then a year from now it's all over. Gates has everything wired from end to end, and he owns the wires."